Origins of The Kitts' Index
is a valuable
tool for anyone wanting to research records in Nevada County between 1856 -
1922. The following article,
entitled "Kitts' Indexes," originally appeared in the "Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin".
It provides some background on how these indexes came about. A list of the types of records indexed as well as general
information follows the article.

"Charles W. Kitts, a Grass
Valley attorney who had been Public Administrator from 1876 - 1879,
painstakingly prepared an index to the deeds of Nevada County. In early
January of 1882 he offered it to the county for $2,500.

Immediately there was
criticism. In letters to the editors of both local dailies on January 12,
Kitts explained the scope of the project. He had corrected 1,500 serious
errors in the old indexes and placed the names in alphabetical order.

Not only was the old index not
alphabetized, parts of the 14 volumes were illegible. Volume six had been
rewritten in 1876 or 1877 with no corrections for a cost of $100.

Kitts indexed about 90,000
names from the 61 volumes of deeds, comparing the index with every document
recorded. This chore took him over 750 days.

He estimated that $2,500
amounted to three cents per name. supervisors admitted the indexes were
cheap and useful, but the county lacked the money to buy the set because the
Central Pacific had failed to pay its taxes for two years.

(The CP went to court in the
early spring to halt the sale of railroad property by the Nevada County
treasurer for back taxes. Later a portion of the money the railroad owed
was paid.)

In March, Kitts copyrighted
his indexes and the county eventually obtained them. They are still in use
in the recorder's office. [Frances Burr, who began work in the Recorder's
office in 1967, does not recall ever seeing them.]

Records in the courthouse,
then as now, only dated back to July of 1856 when the year-old courthouse burned
and all previous records were destroyed."

Former Nevada County Clerk-Recorder
and current Nevada County Genealogical Society President, Bruce Bolinger,
recounts the following items.

Bob Bergantz of Roseberg, Oregon
said that sometime prior to 1976 he acquired the nine-volume set of Kitts'
indexes for the period of 1856 - 1922 from Charlie Kitts. owner of a corner
grocery store at the intersection of Town Talk and Banner-Lava Cap.
Charlie Kitts was the nephew of Charles W. Kitts, who compiled the index.
Bergantz, an acquaintance of Charlie Kitts, had previously borrowed the index
from him to do research on his property. Charlie Kitts said that the books
would be destroyed unless Bergantz preserved them and therefore he should keep
them. Bergantz recalls that the books had been kept in a storage building
where the conditions were poor for storing such records; some moisture had
gotten on some of them. Bergantz had been employed by the Nevada County
Sheriff's Department. When Bergantz and his wife Mary Lee prepared to move
to Placerville in 1976 (then to Oregon in 1989), he donated the books to the
Searls Historical Library. (Telephone conversation with Bruce
Bolinger in 1994.)

In December of 1994, Ed Tyson,
librarian of the Searls Historical Library, loaned the nine-volume set of the
Kitts' Index for 1856 - 1922 to Nevada County Clerk-Recorder Bruce Bollinger at
the latter's request so that Bolinger could have the books microfilmed.
That way the Recorder's office could have a microfiche copy of the index and the
originals could be retained by the Searls Library. The staff of the Nevada
County Recorder's office numbered the pages of the books to ensure that no pages
were omitted during microfilming. The books were microfilmed in January
1995 and then returned to the Searls Historical Library, with microfiche copies
being distributed to the Recorder's office, the Searls Library, the Local
History Branch of the Nevada County Library, and commercial and genealogical
users.

(Bruce Bolinger, February 1995)

**********

General Information

The
entire index was typed on pages measuring 11" x 17". they are of
good quality paper of a type used in ledgers. (In addition to the printed
horizontal lines, there are vertical lines.) Each ledger page was divided
into two sections or sub-pages, in effect, two pages of listings on each ledger
page. All ledger pages are headed as follows:

ALPHABETICAL GENERAL
INDEX

TO

RECORDS OF NEVADA COUNTY,
CAL.

JULY 21, 1856 TO JANUARY 26,
1922

Each
ledger page contains approximately 76 listings. With 2,814 pages in the
nine-volume set, that means the Kitts' Index contains approximately 213,864
listings.

The
ledger pages are numbered from 0001 to 2,813. (One ledger page was skipped
during the numbering in 1995. The error was remedied by numbering the
preceding page as xxx-A and the skipped page as xxx-B.)

**********

Types of Records Indexed

There
are some 22 different types of records indexed in the Kitts' Index, appearing as
follows:

CERT TAX SALE(S)

NOTICE ACTION

CO. (COUNTY) JUDGE

ORDER OF SALE

COLL. DEEDS

PATENT

DEEDS*

POW ATTY

HOMESTEAD(S)

PROBATE JUDGE

JUDGMENT

PROBATE ORDER

LEASE(S)

SHFFS CERT SALE

LIEN(S)

SHFFS DEED

MIS RECORD

ST. TAX DEED

MORTGAGE(S)

SUPERIOR JUDGE

MORTGAGE (CHAT)

TRUST DEED(S)

*Deeds
are not listed as such; see below.

**********

Interpreting the Index

The
Kitts' Index is an alphabetical index by name. Unless otherwise specified,
each entry is a deed and refers to the respective Book of Deeds. If the
listing does not involve a deed, one of the entries listed above, e.g., MIS (for
Miscellaneous Records), will appeal. For each listing two numbers are
given, the first number being the volume, and the second the page.

Within each sub-page on a ledger page, the information for each listing appears
in two parallel columns. The left hand column lists the grantor, the right
hand column the grantee. However, if a double plus sign (++) appears
before the name in the right hand column, the name following the sign is that of
a grantor, not a grantee, while the name in the left hand column is that of the
grantee.

In
the left column, ditto marks are omitted after the first listing of the surname.

The
number in parentheses tells the user how many records there are for the
individual on the page of the book of records, e.g., "LIEN (6)".
If there are additional book and page listings for an individual in the index,
each listing involves only one page.

As an
aid to the user, alternate spellings appear when applicable, e.g.,
"COWAN--SEE--COWEN & COWIN.

The
entire Kitts' Index appears on 22 fiche numbered 01 to 22. The first names
listed in the first page on the Kitts' Index reproduced on a fiche is shown in
the title strip along the top of the fiche. With the exception of fiche
number 22, each fiche contains 132 pages from the Kitts' Index.